ST. LOUIS - Save A Lot made a big change to it's business model.
The St. Ann, Missouri-based discount supermarket chain, which has 900 stores across 32 states, sold off the remaining 18 stores it owned last week, all of which were in St. Louis.
The discount supermarket began favoring more of independently owned and franchisee business model beginning in 2020.
The supermarket kept its St. Louis stores, with the intent of using them to serve as a 'innovation lab'
Save A Lot CEO Leon Bergmann talked with KMOX's Michael Calhoun about the decision to change the business model and where does the market goes from here.
Bergmann says that the decision to have all the stores independently owned fits better for them because they believe the entrepreneurs know their market better than they do.
"Quiet frankly, they just closest to and best positioned to meet the needs of their customers," said Bergmann, "You put the store operations in their hands, they are 100% focused on having the right mix of products at the right price, right quality. It will provide a much better shopping experience for the people."
Bergmann says that in despite of the business model change, they will still try to do tests with the retail partners to better improve the shopping experience and ultimately it will help benefit both the entrepreneurs and the country-wide brand.
"There are two advantages to this," said Bergmann, "the first advantage our retail partners will push back harder than a corporate store ever will. The second advantage is that we can better define the control and test groups of stores across different markets, demographics, and geographies to learn more.
"We have a terrific partnership with our retail operators and we are going to leverage that."